# The walls of Jericho
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [April 24, 2006, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967 "2006-04-24T12:27:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2006, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/41 "2006-04-27T18:02:58Z")
> [@astorian](#):
>
> I never undertsand the rationale behind “explanations” like this.
>
> I mean, it’s obvious that you discount the Bible’s claim that something supernatural happened. And that’s fine. I’m not going to ask you to believe that Jehovah made the walls of Jericho fall.
>
> But if you reject THAT part of the story as a crock, why do you assume the REST of it must be true and look for a rational, natural explanation for the rest of it?
>
> Why not assume it’s ALL baloney (that the walls never fell, that the Israelites just gradually replaced the original inhabitants)? Or that there’s only a tiny kernel of truth (say, that the Israelites conquered Jericho by a long, prolonged siege or a long, slow process of starving them out) in an otherwise grossly exaggerated story?
>
> I had the same problem with Thomas Jefferson’s famous attempt to excise all the supernatural parts of the Gospels and leave us with only the “real” teachings of the admirable, secular teacher he assumed Jesus was. I’d love to have asked him, “Tom, if you think the Gospel writers were deluded, insane or full of crap when writing about God or miracles, how can you asume they were sane, faithful stenographers when writing about non-supernatural things?”
But the Bible doesn’t claim something supernatural happened. It just says the walls fell - not why. God tells Joshua that if he engages in a certain strategy, the walls will fall - I suppose _that_ is supernatural; but the actual agency of their fall is not disclosed.
I don’t see anything wrong with starting from the proposition that the Bible is a mixture of history and mythology, and attempting to tease out the historical and mythological elements with the aid (for example) of archaeological techniques, textual analysis and comparisons to similar cultures - I do not think that the only two possible stances are to accept it all as true or reject it all as false.
At the very least, the stories in the Bible can tell us about the people who wrote them (assuming that the time of writing of particular bits can be ascertained, and realizing that the stories represent both older accounts and may have newer interpolations).
---
### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2006, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/42 "2006-04-27T18:06:53Z")
> [@Malthus](#):
>
> If the walls that are present date from 1550 BCE, why would they not still be there in 1300 BCE or even later? Plenty of castles, stone walls, etc. have survived much longer spans of time than 200 years and have still remained usable as defences. Why is it so certain that the walls were in ruins, after a mere couple of hundred years?
The walls were _destroyed_ in 1550 BCE. Jericho was uninhabited in the alleged time of Joshua. It was a ruin.
> [@](#):
>
> What I have heard is that the “Israelite-Caananite” conflict may have been a conflict between hill tribes and more urbanized lowlanders - not necessarily an invasion of the decendents of ex-slaves from Egypt, but also not necessarily totally imaginary as a conflict, either.
That sounds like Mendenhall’s Peasant Revolt Theory. It has problems. Some modified versions have been proposed, notably by Gottwald, but the theory still hasn’t received majority support.
[Here’s a good article](http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_canaan_bimson.html) which discussed the various theories of Israelite origins in Canaan (and which also covers the Jericho material).
---
### Author:  [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2006, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/43 "2006-04-27T18:17:55Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#):
>
> The walls were _destroyed_ in 1550 BCE. Jericho was uninhabited in the alleged time of Joshua. It was a ruin.
Ah, my misunderstanding. I thought from your previous post that you were saying that the walls had been _constructed_ in 1550 BCE.
Is it known what destroyed the walls in 1550 BCE?
> [@](#):
>
> That sounds like Mendenhall’s Peasant Revolt Theory. It has problems. Some modified versions have been proposed, notably by Gottwald, but the theory still hasn’t received majority support.
>
> [Here’s a good article](http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_canaan_bimson.html) which discussed the various theories of Israelite origins in Canaan (and which also covers the Jericho material).
Very interesting. The author of your source seems to prefer moving the date of the emergence of “Israelite” back to 1500 or so BCE - which would them make the Bible account _more_ likely to be historical (thus, the Israelites would be responsible for the destruction of the walls of Jerico):
> [@](#):
>
> I have argued in detail elsewhere128 for a return to the 15th-century date implied by the OT’s internal chronology (1 Ki. 6:1; Jdg. 11:26). Some of the reasons for rejecting this date (such as the alleged gap in occupation in Transjordan) have disappeared and others are not so strong as has sometimes been supposed. One major difficulty for the 15th-century date has been the apparent absence of evidence for a violent conquest at the end of that century. In response, I have tried to show that the missing evidence is probably provided by the fall of Canaan’s fortified cities at the close of the MBA.129 This event has traditionally been dated between 1550 and 1500 BC and attributed to Egyptian campaigns. Arguments against the traditional view are now emerging, lending plausibility to my suggestion that these cities were actually destroyed about a hundred years later, and that their destroyers were the incoming Israelites.130 It will be a good while before enough evidence is available for a final verdict (insofar as final verdicts are ever reached in such matters!), but this approach currently seems to be a promising one.
---
### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2006, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/44 "2006-04-27T19:16:20Z")
> [@Malthus](#):
>
> Ah, my misunderstanding. I thought from your previous post that you were saying that the walls had been _constructed_ in 1550 BCE.
>
> Is it known what destroyed the walls in 1550 BCE?
Yes. The date comes from carbon-14 dating of the destruction level.
> [@](#):
>
> Very interesting. The author of your source seems to prefer moving the date of the emergence of “Israelite” back to 1500 or so BCE - which would them make the Bible account _more_ likely to be historical (thus, the Israelites would be responsible for the destruction of the walls of Jerico):
Even if the Isaelites had emerged by 1500 (and there is no evidence for them before the Mempetah Stele c. 1230 BCE), why would that mean they were responsible for the destruction of Jericho? It just so happens that Egypt was engaged in its own conquest of Canaan in 1550 BCE, after the Pharaoh Ahmose 1 had expelled the Hyksos from Egypt, pursued them into Canaan and destroyed them. Kathleen Kenyon concluded that the destruction of Jericho was a result of that campaign.
The Hyksos history in Egypt and eventual expulsion is very interesting in itself and is a likely candidate for the origin of the Exodus story.
---
### Author:  [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2006, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/45 "2006-04-27T19:41:00Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#):
>
> Yes. The date comes from carbon-14 dating of the destruction level.
I uderstand that carbon-14 gives the date - my question was whether it was known _what_ destroyed the walls. Siege, earthquake, fire, other?
> [@](#):
>
> Even if the Isaelites had emerged by 1500 (and there is no evidence for them before the Mempetah Stele c. 1230 BCE), why would that mean they were responsible for the destruction of Jericho? It just so happens that Egypt was engaged in its own conquest of Canaan in 1550 BCE, after the Pharaoh Ahmose 1 had expelled the Hyksos from Egypt, pursued them into Canaan and destroyed them. Kathleen Kenyon concluded that the destruction of Jericho was a result of that campaign.
>
> The Hyksos history in Egypt and eventual expulsion is very interesting in itself and is a likely candidate for the origin of the Exodus story.
Hey, it’s not _my_ theory - I’m just paraphrasing what the author of _your_ source says. 😉
What I heard (as an alternate theory) was that it was possible that the story of the persecution of the Israelites in Egypt could have originated in the expulsion of the Hyksos - the “Israelite slaves” being those Hyksos left behind or captured, or semitic “fellow travellers” of the Hyksos.
Just curious - what is the archaeological/textual evidence for an Egyptian invasion?
---
### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2006, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/46 "2006-04-27T20:12:05Z")
[suppressed laughter] SNORK![/suppressed laughter]
All the ads at the bottom of this page are for _trumpets_.
---
### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2006, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/47 "2006-04-27T20:13:48Z")
> [@Malthus](#):
>
> I uderstand that carbon-14 gives the date - my question was whether it was known _what_ destroyed the walls. Siege, earthquake, fire, other?
Oh, sorry. It was destroyed by fire.
> [@](#):
>
> What I heard (as an alternate theory) was that it was possible that the story of the persecution of the Israelites in Egypt could have originated in the expulsion of the Hyksos - the “Israelite slaves” being those Hyksos left behind or captured, or semitic “fellow travellers” of the Hyksos.
There is a pretty strong consensus that the Exodus story had its roots in the Hyksos rebellion somewhere but the Hyksos (while Canaanites) weren’t _Israelites_ and there is no evidence for the presence of Israelites in Egypt at all before, during or after the Hyksos occupation. Like I said above, the first evidence for the emergence of the Israelites as a distinct group doesn’t even come until ~300 years after the Hyksos expulsion. In general, the hypotheses tend to revolve around an idea that the Hyksos story was adopted and inverted by the Israelites but that it wasn’t originally _about_ them.
> [@](#):
>
> Just curious - what is the archaeological/textual evidence for an Egyptian invasion?
I’m not an expert on this but I think a lot of the evidence comes from Egyptian records and inscriptions found in Canaan itself, as well as some destruction sites which are consistent with Egyptian destructions of conquest. I’m sure there must be Egyptian military artifacts as well but I don’t know enough about the Ahomse 1 campaign to say for sure.
---
### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2006, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/48 "2006-04-27T20:16:52Z")
> [@](#):
>
> …as well as some destruction sites which are consistent with Egyptian destructions of conquest.
That should be "…consistent with Egyptian **descriptions** of conquests.
---
### Author:  [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2006, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/49 "2006-04-27T20:22:56Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> [suppressed laughter] SNORK![/suppressed laughter]
> All the ads at the bottom of this page are for _trumpets_.
😃
Didn’t know you could advertise seige weapons … 😉
---
### Author:  [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2006, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/50 "2006-04-27T20:34:44Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#):
>
> Oh, sorry. It was destroyed by fire.
No prob.
My favourite details about Jericho are far, far older … that cool Neolithic-era tower. That is truly amazing - I think Keegan pointed out in his _History of Warfare_ that the builders of neolithic Jericho had developed almost all of the aspects of siege defences in use until the gunpowder era, save a water moat.
> [@](#):
>
> There is a pretty strong consensus that the Exodus story had its roots in the Hyksos rebellion somewhere but the Hyksos (while Canaanites) weren’t _Israelites_ and there is no evidence for the presence of Israelites in Egypt at all before, during or after the Hyksos occupation. Like I said above, the first evidence for the emergence of the Israelites as a distinct group doesn’t even come until ~300 years after the Hyksos expulsion. In general, the hypotheses tend to revolve around an idea that the Hyksos story was adopted and inverted by the Israelites but that it wasn’t originally _about_ them.
There is where it becomes somewhat murky. What do we mean by “them”? Most of the theories I have seen have held that Israelites developed out of Canaanites … so it could well have been their ancestors, or even “them”, assuming that there were “proto-Israelite” strains of thought or sentiment among the Caananite/Hyksos a few hundred years before they were well enough differentiated to be considered as seperate groups in any manner that would leave historic traces.
> [@](#):
>
> I’m not an expert on this but I think a lot of the evidence comes from Egyptian records and inscriptions found in Canaan itself, as well as some destruction sites which are consistent with Egyptian destructions of conquest. I’m sure there must be Egyptian military artifacts as well but I don’t know enough about the Ahomse 1 campaign to say for sure.
It certainly is an interesting area of research. It is an object lesson in the difference between the importance of a group in their time and their later historical importance - the early (pre-monarchy) Israelites left little trace during their time, and were it not for the survival of the OT, they would be little more than an obscure footnote to history.
---
### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2006, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/51 "2006-04-27T20:35:12Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#):
>
> There was no fortified city at Jericho during the alleged time of Joshua. There were no walls to come tumbling down. The walls that are present date from about 1550 BCE. The distinctive cultural group known as “Israelites” did not even emerge in Canaan until about the 13th Century. Jericho would have been a ruin before Joshua ever got there (not that the Isralites ever actually left Canaan in the first place), but the archaeological evidence shows that there never was any Israelite conquest of Canaan at all. .
We don’t know _exactly_ when Joshua was around, or when Jericho was a walled city, or when the Hebrews took that area over. So, who cares if the Bible- which doesn’t even have any dates during the period were talking about, so the various “dates” have to be inferred & estimated anyway- and archaeology (which also here is working on estimates, even C-14 is +/- 150 years or so, and the sample might not be representative)- don’t match up exactly? In fact, it’d be a huge shocker if they did. But you read too many of those damn bible-debunking sites, and you get all your info from them. What you’d have to tell me is that \*during the entire range of estimates of Jericho being a walled city, \* and _during the entire range of estimates where the Hebrews took over that area_- all the experts agree **there is no overlap**. And, you can’t. Well, not honestly.
Here’s a UNBIASED cite:
[http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/sites/middle\_east/jericho.html](http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/sites/middle_east/jericho.html)
“Evidence suggests that the city has been inhabited on and off through the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze-Iron ages; partly due to the areas good water supply, fertile land , and favorable climate. Perhaps the most important aspect of the site is its strategic location, which provided access to the heartland of Canaan. This would have made Jerico a prime target for the marauding Israelites on their way through Palestine.”
"Years later, another archaeologist named Bryant Wood would come up with another conclusion. In 1990 he published a reevaluation of Kenyan’s work, challenging her assertion that the city was destroyed before the 15th century BC. He claims that an abundance of pottery located at the site coincides with other local pottery common to the time of 1400BC and points out that Garstang’s account does seem to describe it. Also, carbon-14 testing of a sample of charcoal from the site indicated a date of 1410 BC. The radiocarbon date seems to validate Garstang’s earlier claim that the city was destroyed around 1400 BC. Whether of not Joshua actually destroyed it will probably remain a mystery. _All we know for sure is that the new work contributed by Wood neither confirms nor denies the possibility."_ italics mine
Wiki sez"Many of the Canaanite cities were destroyed during 16th century BC at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, and such traces have been found in Jericho by three different excavations. There are also archaeological signs of a wall around the city with a stone outer revetment but primarily built of mud brick. _The exact sequence and dating of these remains is difficult and highly debated. Kathleen Kenyon noted 15 different destructive episodes in the Bronze Age remains._
The Biblical account of its destruction is found in the Book of Joshua. The Bible describes the destruction as having proceeded from the actions of Joshua, Moses’ successor. Biblical researchers who use Scriptural genealogies to date the exodus to the 16th or 15th century BC see this as significant support for the veracity of the record, and a landmark in the Biblical archaeology corpus. Other scholars see a contradiction between history and the biblical text in this area, as the earliest known Israelite settlements do not appear until ca.1230 BC, long after Jericho’s walls had already been destroyed."
Another cite:[http://www.netours.com/2003/jericho-debate.htm](http://www.netours.com/2003/jericho-debate.htm)
"Since the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere varies at different times, raw C-14 dates are calibrated to actual dates by checking the C-14 in trees when their rings can serve as an independent indicator. _Wood cites studies showing regional differences among trees with respect to the quantity of C-14 at given times. Since there is not enough data from local trees to calibrate raw C-14 dates, Wood refuses to accept the above findings for Jericho. "_
“If Jericho was destroyed in 1550 BC, who would have done the deed? This was the time when the Egyptians drove the Hyksos out. It does not make sense that the fleeing Hyksos would have destroyed the town. As for the Egyptians, their records show them pursuing the Hyksos only as far as Sharuhen, a city in the Negev. Moreover, the Egyptians preferred to attack before the harvest, taking the crops for their troops and laying siege to the cities. In the destruction layer of the last Bronze Age Jericho, however, Kenyon made an unusual find: storage jars containing six bushels of grain.”
Another unbiased cite:
[http://www.utexas.edu/courses/wilson/ant304/projects/projects97/kingp/jericho.html](http://www.utexas.edu/courses/wilson/ant304/projects/projects97/kingp/jericho.html)
"This Radiocarbon date would seem to firmly establish that whatever catastrophic event destroyed the city of Jericho during the Bronze Age it happened in the period around 1400 B.C. and not in the period around 1550 B.C., as Kenyon had maintained (53). Additionally, many scholars believe the destruction of the walls was caused by an earthquake, which could also explain the temporary damning of the Jordan (Joshua 3:16) (Lemonick).
_Wood makes a strong case for the accuracy of the Biblical narrative of the destruction of Jericho, but ultimately it only tells us that the events recorded in the Book of Joshua do not disagree with the archaeological record_. As Time magazine noted, “_Other experts find little fault with Wood’s archaeology_, but they are more skeptical about his linking of the evidence with Biblical events”. Most scholars reject the historicity of Joshua in favor of belief in peaceful conquest. The prevailing belief in academia is that the Israelites came in far later than 1400 B.C., perhaps by two centuries, and they came “not as military conquerors bust as a wave of immigrants” (Lemonick).
Wood’s use of Kenyon’s observations and data to disprove Kenyon’s conclusions shows us how important good methods are in archaeological field work. She did not go out and prove a hypothesis destroying the very evidence in the process, as one could argue earlier archaeologists had done. Instead she recorded the data which she had collected precisely, allowing those that come after her to test her hypotheses and inferences"
From your own cite:!“I have argued in detail elsewhere128 for a return to the 15th-century date implied by the OT’s internal chronology (1 Ki. 6:1; Jdg. 11:26). Some of the reasons for rejecting this date (such as the alleged gap in occupation in Transjordan) have disappeared and others are not so strong as has sometimes been supposed. One major difficulty for the 15th-century date has been the apparent absence of evidence for a violent conquest at the end of that century. In response, I have tried to show that the missing evidence is probably provided by the fall of Canaan’s fortified cities at the close of the MBA.129 This event has traditionally been dated between 1550 and 1500 BC and attributed to Egyptian campaigns. \*Arguments against the traditional view are now emerging, lending plausibility to my suggestion that these cities were actually destroyed about a hundred years later, and that their destroyers were the incoming Israelites.\*130 It will be a good while before enough evidence is available for a final verdict (insofar as final verdicts are ever reached in such matters!), but this approach currently seems to be a promising one.”
None of this proves that “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho”, but it does prove that the issue is highly debated with experts on both sides disagreeing.
---
### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2006, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/52 "2006-04-27T23:05:57Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> We don’t know _exactly_ when Joshua was around, or when Jericho was a walled city, or when the Hebrews took that area over.
We know when it _stopped_ being a walled city, we know it was uninhabited in the 13th Century and we know there’s no evidence it was ever “taken over by Hebrews.”
> [@](#):
>
> So, who cares if the Bible- which doesn’t even have any dates during the period were talking about, so the various “dates” have to be inferred & estimated anyway- and archaeology (which also here is working on estimates, even C-14 is +/- 150 years or so, and the sample might not be representative)- don’t match up exactly?
Nice try, but I haven’t said anything about Biblical dates. I said the destruction layer at Jericho is dated 300 years before the first evidence for the existence of the Israelites. The Bible is pretty much irrelevant but for the record, Exodus claims the Israelites built the City of Rameses, which means that. according to the Bible, the Exodus couldn’t have occurred before the 13th Century.
> [@](#):
>
> But you read too many of those damn bible-debunking sites, and you get all your info from them.
Excuse me? What sites would those be? I couldn’t name one if you wanted me to. I don’t get my information from "Bible debunking sites,"I get it from books and journal articles written by credentialed scholars. I haven’t cited any “Bible-debunking” sites in this thread, not have I made any claims which are out of the mainstream consensus.
> [@](#):
>
> What you’d have to tell me is that \*during the entire range of estimates of Jericho being a walled city
Those estimates end at 1550 BCE.
> [@](#):
>
> - and _during the entire range of estimates where the Hebrews took over that area_- all the experts agree **there is no overlap**. And, you can’t. Well, not honestly.
What do you mean when you say “when the Hebrews took over that area?” Are you talking about Israelites occupying Jericho proper (9th Century BCE) or just becoming a general political power in Southern Canaan (10th Century)? Either way, there us no conceivable overlap and there is certainly no evidence for the Israelites ever conquering anything even in the 13th Century. The Merneptah Stele mentions “Israel” as a people but not as a kingdom or a geographical polity. What do you think is “dishonest” about that assessment?
[quote]
Here’s a UNBIASED cite:
[http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/sites/middle\_east/jericho.html](http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/sites/middle_east/jericho.html)
“Evidence suggests that the city has been inhabited on and off through the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze-Iron ages; partly due to the areas good water supply, fertile land , and favorable climate. Perhaps the most important aspect of the site is its strategic location, which provided access to the heartland of Canaan. This would have made Jerico a prime target for the marauding Israelites on their way through Palestine.”[/qopte]
Yes. it was inhabited “off and on.” One of the "off parts included the 13th Century.
> [@](#):
>
> "Years later, another archaeologist named Bryant Wood would come up with another conclusion.
You mean [this Bryant Wood](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryant_G._Wood). The creationist, evangelical Christian from [christiananswers.net](http://christiananswers.net)? The one who has a publicly avowed goal to “demonstrate the reliability of scripture” through archaeology? The one who said in the article referenced (which was published in an evangelical, pseudo-journal called Biblical Archaeology Review) that “God used an earthquake to destroy Jericho?” Yeah, that’s a real unbiased source, there.
Still he is a legitimately credentialed archaeologist so we should consider his evidence.
> [@](#):
>
> In 1990 he published a reevaluation of Kenyan’s work, challenging her assertion that the city was destroyed before the 15th century BC. He claims that an abundance of pottery located at the site coincides with other local pottery common to the time of 1400BC and points out that Garstang’s account does seem to describe it. Also, carbon-14 testing of a sample of charcoal from the site indicated a date of 1410 BC. The radiocarbon date seems to validate Garstang’s earlier claim that the city was destroyed around 1400 BC. Whether of not Joshua actually destroyed it will probably remain a mystery. _All we know for sure is that the new work contributed by Wood neither confirms nor denies the possibility."_ italics mine
All this really shows is that there was some habitation in Jericho in the 15th century. It doesn’t actually challenge the dating of the destruction, it only shows that there was probably a brief attempt at resettlement after the destruction, but even that settlement was gone well before the 13th Century.
> [@](#):
>
> Wiki sez"Many of the Canaanite cities were destroyed during 16th century BC at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, and such traces have been found in Jericho by three different excavations. There are also archaeological signs of a wall around the city with a stone outer revetment but primarily built of mud brick. _The exact sequence and dating of these remains is difficult and highly debated. Kathleen Kenyon noted 15 different destructive episodes in the Bronze Age remains._
> The Biblical account of its destruction is found in the Book of Joshua. The Bible describes the destruction as having proceeded from the actions of Joshua, Moses’ successor. Biblical researchers who use Scriptural genealogies to date the exodus to the 16th or 15th century BC see this as significant support for the veracity of the record, and a landmark in the Biblical archaeology corpus. Other scholars see a contradiction between history and the biblical text in this area, as the earliest known Israelite settlements do not appear until ca.1230 BC, long after Jericho’s walls had already been destroyed."
What is any of this supposed to prove?
> [@](#):
>
> Another cite:[http://www.netours.com/2003/jericho-debate.htm](http://www.netours.com/2003/jericho-debate.htm)
> "Since the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere varies at different times, raw C-14 dates are calibrated to actual dates by checking the C-14 in trees when their rings can serve as an independent indicator. _Wood cites studies showing regional differences among trees with respect to the quantity of C-14 at given times. Since there is not enough data from local trees to calibrate raw C-14 dates, Wood refuses to accept the above findings for Jericho. "_
> “If Jericho was destroyed in 1550 BC, who would have done the deed? This was the time when the Egyptians drove the Hyksos out. It does not make sense that the fleeing Hyksos would have destroyed the town. As for the Egyptians, their records show them pursuing the Hyksos only as far as Sharuhen, a city in the Negev. Moreover, the Egyptians preferred to attack before the harvest, taking the crops for their troops and laying siege to the cities. In the destruction layer of the last Bronze Age Jericho, however, Kenyon made an unusual find: storage jars containing six bushels of grain.”
A cite from a Near Eastern Tourist Agency propounding a pro-Biblical argument? Give me a break.
> [@](#):
>
> Another unbiased cite:
> [http://www.utexas.edu/courses/wilson/ant304/projects/projects97/kingp/jericho.html](http://www.utexas.edu/courses/wilson/ant304/projects/projects97/kingp/jericho.html)
>
> "This Radiocarbon date would seem to firmly establish that whatever catastrophic event destroyed the city of Jericho during the Bronze Age it happened in the period around 1400 B.C. and not in the period around 1550 B.C., as Kenyon had maintained (53). Additionally, many scholars believe the destruction of the walls was caused by an earthquake, which could also explain the temporary damning of the Jordan (Joshua 3:16) (Lemonick).
>
> _Wood makes a strong case for the accuracy of the Biblical narrative of the destruction of Jericho, but ultimately it only tells us that the events recorded in the Book of Joshua do not disagree with the archaeological record_. As Time magazine noted, “_Other experts find little fault with Wood’s archaeology_, but they are more skeptical about his linking of the evidence with Biblical events”. Most scholars reject the historicity of Joshua in favor of belief in peaceful conquest. The prevailing belief in academia is that the Israelites came in far later than 1400 B.C., perhaps by two centuries, and they came “not as military conquerors bust as a wave of immigrants” (Lemonick).
>
> Wood’s use of Kenyon’s observations and data to disprove Kenyon’s conclusions shows us how important good methods are in archaeological field work. She did not go out and prove a hypothesis destroying the very evidence in the process, as one could argue earlier archaeologists had done. Instead she recorded the data which she had collected precisely, allowing those that come after her to test her hypotheses and inferences"
More Wood. He found a piece of charcoal which he dated to 1400 BCE. That doesn’t establish a date for the destruction level and from what I understand, his dating is not widely accepted. He is a very biased source, as I mentioned.
> [@](#):
>
> From your own cite:!“I have argued in detail elsewhere128 for a return to the 15th-century date implied by the OT’s internal chronology (1 Ki. 6:1; Jdg. 11:26). Some of the reasons for rejecting this date (such as the alleged gap in occupation in Transjordan) have disappeared and others are not so strong as has sometimes been supposed. One major difficulty for the 15th-century date has been the apparent absence of evidence for a violent conquest at the end of that century. In response, I have tried to show that the missing evidence is probably provided by the fall of Canaan’s fortified cities at the close of the MBA.129 This event has traditionally been dated between 1550 and 1500 BC and attributed to Egyptian campaigns. \*Arguments against the traditional view are now emerging, lending plausibility to my suggestion that these cities were actually destroyed about a hundred years later, and that their destroyers were the incoming Israelites.\*130 It will be a good while before enough evidence is available for a final verdict (insofar as final verdicts are ever reached in such matters!), but this approach currently seems to be a promising one.”
I already addressed this. The author has no evidence in support of this idea and it IS a Christian website (I don’t want to discredit myself by linking to any “Bible-debunking” sites). I linked it because the author prevented a pretty good overview for the emergence theories.
> [@](#):
>
> None of this proves that “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho”, but it does prove that the issue is highly debated with experts on both sides disagreeing.
No. There really aren’t any experts trying to argue that Jericho was destroyed by Joshua (except for a few special cases like Bryant Wood but you can also find geologists who will argue for a global flood). For one thing there simply isn’t any evidence at all that there _were_ any Israelites when Jericho was burned, even using Woods’ date of 1400. For another thing, the context for the Biblical story pulls the foundation out from under the hypothesis. Since there was no enslavement in Egypt, no Exodus, no return to Canaan and no Israelite conquest of Canaan, it’s hard to surmise how the Joshua story could fit into any real historical scenario.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2006, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/53 "2006-04-28T01:35:47Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#):
>
> We know when it _stopped_ being a walled city, we know it was uninhabited in the 13th Century and we know there’s no evidence it was ever “taken over by Hebrews.”
>
> Nice try, but I haven’t said anything about Biblical dates. I said the destruction layer at Jericho is dated 300 years before the first evidence for the existence of the Israelites. The Bible is pretty much irrelevant but for the record, Exodus claims the Israelites built the City of Rameses, which means that. according to the Bible, the Exodus couldn’t have occurred before the 13th Century.
>
> Those estimates end at 1550 BCE.
>
> What do you mean when you say “when the Hebrews took over that area?” Are you talking about Israelites occupying Jericho proper (9th Century BCE) or just becoming a general political power in Southern Canaan (10th Century)? Either way, there us no conceivable overlap and there is certainly no evidence for the Israelites ever conquering anything even in the 13th Century.
> Yes. it was inhabited “off and on.” One of the "off parts included the 13th Century.
>
> A cite from a Near Eastern Tourist Agency propounding a pro-Biblical argument? Give me a break.
>
> More Wood. He found a piece of charcoal which he dated to 1400 BCE. That doesn’t establish a date for the destruction level and from what I understand, his dating is not widely accepted. He is a very biased source, as I mentioned.
>
> I already addressed this. The author has no evidence in support of this idea and it IS a Christian website (I don’t want to discredit myself by linking to any “Bible-debunking” sites). I linked it because the author prevented a pretty good overview for the emergence theories.
>
> No. There really aren’t any experts trying to argue that Jericho was destroyed by Joshua (except for a few special cases like Bryant Wood but you can also find geologists who will argue for a global flood). For one thing there simply isn’t any evidence at all that there _were_ any Israelites when Jericho was burned, even using Woods’ date of 1400. For another thing, the context for the Biblical story pulls the foundation out from under the hypothesis. Since there was no enslavement in Egypt, no Exodus, no return to Canaan and no Israelite conquest of Canaan, it’s hard to surmise how the Joshua story could fit into any real historical scenario.
The site of Jericho had a fresh water supply. Thus, the chance the site has ever been really unihabited by humnas is something you’ll have to prove. Cite? Not just that there wasn’t a large city, certainly cities come & go, but that for from unimaginable reason, one of the few sites in an extremly arid region with a good source of water somehow managed to no be occupied. That strains anyones reason.
First evidence of the existance of the Isrealites is highly contested, even amoung dudes with PhD after their name. Basicly because the Hebrews didn’t show up with a lot of obelisks and such. In fact the earliest mention of the Israelites is from the Merneptah or Isreal Stela, erected in **1209** BC. But by this time the Isrealites were well-established, as is proven by the Stela. So, they certainly were around much earlier, maybe centuries earlier. The estimates for the last date of the BIG WALLED CITY of JERICHO are 1400, not 1550. So, as little as 100 years before the Isrealites were a significant power, BIG WALLED CITY of JERICHO might have fallen. Of course, Jericho was rebuilt, and even Kenton says there was a village there during the estimated time of Joshua. So, your figures are wrong.
Next- nowhere in the Bible does it say the Isralites built\* Per-_Ramses, built by Rameses II. It does say they built Pithom & Ramses. Many towns had Pithom as part of their name, but AFAWK, none had it as their entire name. Thus, we can’t identify Pithom. The place name Rameses was used in a number of towns and such up until Greco-Roman times. (Oxford History of the Biblical World, pg65). So, using Exodus to put a solid date on the Conquest is fruitless. It’s like saying someone build "Spring_something\*" which could be any of a half-dozen Springfields, or even a Springburg. Nor does the Bible use the term “13th century”. So, again, wrong.
Well, the site of Jericho is a short trip from Jerusalem, and was part of the nation of Isreal then Judah as far back as we know. So, somewhere along the line, the Hebrews occupied it. True, perhaps they did so peacefully, but occupy it they did, that much is certain. What is uncertain is when, and what was standing when they did. If it comes out all there was “then” was a village around a water hole beneath the shadows of old ruins of a once great city, then that’s certainly a possibilty. But we don’t know and the greatest experts disagree.
So, if you don’t like my cites- all five of them? Including Minnesota State Univ, and Univ of Texas? :rolleyes: So, where’s your cites to refute mine? Oh wait- your ONE cite agress with me, and I quoted it, which you now say is no good as it’s a Christian website! :rolleyes: :dubious:
True, few experts say that “Joshua fit the battle of Jerocho” and I didn’t claim that. I said that the general consenus of experts out there- including major Univerities- agree that the time periods might have overlapped. That doesn’t mean that Joshua did attack the BIG WALLED CITY of JERICHO, it just means that experts now agree that it’s possible.
DtC- real Archeaological experts never put forth “facts” like you so badly stste. They may say “It is \*doubtful \*that there was a BIG WALLED CITY of JERICHO at the time of the “Conquest”, the archaeological evidence _seems_ to say the “Big Walls” had “come a tumbling down” centuries before”. Or they might say “The archaeological evidence _seems_ to support that the Biblical account _may_ be mostly factual”.
But no real archaeological expert ever says shit like “There _was no_ fortified city at Jericho during the alleged time of Joshua. There _were no_ walls to come tumbling down.” and “The walls\* were \*destroyed in 1550 BCE. Jericho \*was \*uninhabited in the alleged time of Joshua. It _was_ a ruin.” (Italics mine, of course) They use _qualfiers_, and lots of them. But you blithely take other experts educated opinions and state them as your own facts. We generally call that “bullshiting”. :rolleyes: You have the same lack of doubt and the same general accuracy as Cliff Claven- you state your opinions as undoubted fact just like he did. 😛 Face it, dude- all the solid undisputed facts about that area and that period could fit on a 3X5 card- if you wrote large- with a crayon.
**Malthus** - pretty much all the answers DtC gave you to your questions are just his opinion, and not\* fact\* in any way shape or form. See some of my cites for other, better educated, less biased, _opinions._ Oh, and one or two facts. Not many though, not many. ☹
---
### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2006, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/54 "2006-04-28T03:04:31Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> The site of Jericho had a fresh water supply. Thus, the chance the site has ever been really unihabited by humnas is something you’ll have to prove. Cite?
My cite is Kathleen Kenyon. She’s the one who said there was a break in occupation and this break is still accepted. From the Biblicalstudies site I linked earlier:
> [@](#):
>
> Since Kathleen Kenyon’s excavations at Jericho (1952-8) it has been widely accepted that no traces of the city attacked by Joshua are to be found. Kenyon’s own view was that, following the destruction of MBA (Middle Bronze Age) Jericho, around 1560 BC, the mound was deserted until a LBA town began to grow up around 1400 BC. This occupation lasted only about a century, and was followed by another long period of abandonment.14 **No evidence was found which could support the existence of a town in the second half of the 13th century BC.** The site of Ai (Khirbet et-Tell, or simply Et-Tell) is another parade example of the failure of excavations to support the biblical tradition. Here the gap in occupation lasts at least a thousand years, c. 2200-1200 BC. **Once again there is no city for Joshua’s forces to attack in the late 13th century**. This problem was already known after the excavations by Mme. J. Marquet-Krause in 1933-5,15 and it was hoped that the renewed excavations of 1964-72, led by J. A. Callaway, would produce some kind of solution, either by uncovering hitherto neglected evidence from the tell itself, or by finding an alternative site for the biblical city nearby. These hopes came to nothing; the gap at Et-Tell was confirmed and the search for an alternative site proved fruitless.
Once again, that’s from a _Christian_ site.
> [@](#):
>
> 1 Not just that there wasn’t a large city, certainly cities come & go, but that for from unimaginable reason, one of the few sites in an extremly arid region with a good source of water somehow managed to no be occupied. That strains anyones reason.
The majority of current ANE archaeologists don’e seem to think so.
> [@](#):
>
> First evidence of the existance of the Isrealites is highly contested, even amoung dudes with PhD after their name. Basicly because the Hebrews didn’t show up with a lot of obelisks and such. In fact the earliest mention of the Israelites is from the Merneptah or Isreal Stela, erected in **1209** BC. But by this time the Isrealites were well-established, as is proven by the Stela.
Well established as what? The Stele doesn’t say. It only says the Egyptians had destroyed a people called Israel (which it identifies a people, not as a nation, kingdom or any other kind of settled geographical polity.
> [@](#):
>
> So, they certainly were around much earlier, maybe centuries earlier.
What is the basis for you assertion that they were around “much earlier.” There is no archaeological evidence for that.
> [@](#):
>
> The estimates for the last date of the BIG WALLED CITY of JERICHO are 1400, not 1550.
No, the last evidence for _human occupation_ at Jericho are 1400. Bryant Wood did not date the walls to 1400 and the date for the destruction is still 1550.
> [@](#):
>
> So, as little as 100 years before the Isrealites were a significant power,
The gap between 1400 and the Merneptah Stele is almost 200 years, not 100, and where are you getting this idea that Israel was a “significant power” even in the late 13th Century? Cite? Just because they were cited as existing as a people (and that’s all the Stele says) doesn’t mean they were a “significant power.” There’s no evidence for that.
> [@](#):
>
> BIG WALLED CITY of JERICHO might have fallen. Of course, Jericho was rebuilt, and even Kenton says there was a village there during the estimated time of Joshua. So, your figures are wrong.
No, Kenyon says the settlement was gone during the alleged time of Joshua.
> [@](#):
>
> Next- nowhere in the Bible does it say the Isralites built\* Per-_Ramses, built by Rameses II. It does say they built Pithom & Ramses. Many towns had Pithom as part of their name, but AFAWK, none had it as their entire name. Thus, we can’t identify Pithom. The place name Rameses was used in a number of towns and such up until Greco-Roman times. (Oxford History of the Biblical World, pg65). So, using Exodus to put a solid date on the Conquest is fruitless. It’s like saying someone build "Spring_something\*" which could be any of a half-dozen Springfields, or even a Springburg. Nor does the Bible use the term “13th century”. So, again, wrong.
The “treasure city of Raamses” referred to in Exodus 1:11 is almost always identified as the capital city of Rameses built by Rameses II, but if you want to say it was a different city, that’s fine. You still have the same problem. ALL the cities with the place name Rameses were built under Rameses II. There was never any Pharaoh named Rameses at all until Rameses I in 1295 BCE, so you’re still stuck with a 13th Century Biblical date for the Exodus no matter what.
> [@](#):
>
> Well, the site of Jericho is a short trip from Jerusalem, and was part of the nation of Isreal then Judah as far back as we know. So, somewhere along the line, the Hebrews occupied it. True, perhaps they did so peacefully, but occupy it they did, that much is certain. What is uncertain is when, and what was standing when they did. If it comes out all there was “then” was a village around a water hole beneath the shadows of old ruins of a once great city, then that’s certainly a possibilty. But we don’t know and the greatest experts disagree.
What experts say there’s any evidence for an Israelite conquest of a fortified city? Settling in the ruins a few centuries later is hardly much of a conquest.
> [@](#):
>
> So, if you don’t like my cites- all five of them?
I didn’t say that. I addressed what substance there was to them but most of them were just repeating the same stuff about Bryant Wood.
> [@](#):
>
> where’s your cites to refute mine?
What’s to refute? You posted a bunch of stuff about an evangelical archaeologist who wants to change a date from 1550 to 1400 BCE. I don’t argue with Woods’ evidence as far as it goes. I just think he draws to big a conclusion from them. So do most other archaeologists as far as I can tell.
> [@](#):
>
> Oh wait- your ONE cite agress with me, and I quoted it, which you now say is no good as it’s a Christian website! :rolleyes: :dubious:
I didn’t say it was “no good,” I said the author’s personal theory was unsupported by evidence (which it is) but that the rest of it was a fairly accurate overview of the various theories of emergence. The site wasn’t linked as proof of anything anyway, it was just linked to show what the different theories _are_, not to try to prove any of them.
> [@](#):
>
> True, few experts say that “Joshua fit the battle of Jerocho” and I didn’t claim that. I said that the general consenus of experts out there- including major Univerities- agree that the time periods might have overlapped. That doesn’t mean that Joshua did attack the BIG WALLED CITY of JERICHO, it just means that experts now agree that it’s possible.
This is untrue. You’ve provided no support for any argument that the Israelites were a “significant power” even in the 13th century and you haven’t provided any academic cites which argue for an “overlap.”
> [@](#):
>
> DtC- real Archeaological experts never put forth “facts” like you so badly stste. They may say “It is \*doubtful \*that there was a BIG WALLED CITY of JERICHO at the time of the “Conquest”, the archaeological evidence _seems_ to say the “Big Walls” had “come a tumbling down” centuries before”. Or they might say “The archaeological evidence _seems_ to support that the Biblical account _may_ be mostly factual”.
They don’t say the latter.
> [@](#):
>
> But no real archaeological expert ever says shit like “There _was no_ fortified city at Jericho during the alleged time of Joshua. There _were no_ walls to come tumbling down.” and “The walls\* were \*destroyed in 1550 BCE. Jericho \*was \*uninhabited in the alleged time of Joshua. It _was_ a ruin.”
Yes they do. Kathleen Kenyon said it. Israel Finkelstein says it. Lots of others say it. They’re quite unambiguous.
> [@](#):
>
> (Italics mine, of course) They use _qualfiers_, and lots of them.
No, they really don’t. have you read _The Bible Unearthed_? Finkelstein and Silberman don’t mince words.
> [@](#):
>
> **Malthus** - pretty much all the answers DtC gave you to your questions are just his opinion, and not\* fact\* in any way shape or form.
This is wishful thinking. I’ve said nothing that isn’t demonstrable fact.
> [@](#):
>
> See some of my cites for other, better educated, less biased, _opinions._ Oh, and one or two facts. Not many though, not many. ☹
Yes, by all means, examine all the cites. Make up your own mind as to who is "biased’ here.
---
### Author:  [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2006, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walls-of-jericho/353967/55 "2006-04-28T08:29:54Z")
I’m not familiar enough with Jericho archaeology to have an informed opinion one way or the other, but I have to comment on the “inconcievable it would be uninhabited” statement. There are _many_ reasons that a site, even on with a fresh water supply in a desert, would have periods in which it was uninhabited.
The most likely is epidemic. There were whole towns and settlements wiped out by disease, particularly when cultures that had previously never exosed to each other came into contact. Europe in the Black Death, numerous cities in what’s now Turkey during Justinian’s Plague [6th century], most of the southeastern U.S. and huge tracts of Central America after the conquistadores, etc., are just a few examples in which whole thriving communities were completely depopulated in a matter of weeks or even days. It could take centuries to rebuild enough of a population to resettle the depopulated region.
There’s also war. You can’t name a more populous and congested city in the ancient western world than Rome- by some estimates the population of the city and its suburbs and hinterlands was almost 2 _million_ at its zenith, unbelievable in a city without modern mass transit and civil engineering. By the sixth century, its population was at most in the 10,000s and probably much less- it was essentially used as a salvage yard whose columns and statues and concrete found their way all over Europe.
Then there’s superstition (there are fertile places all over the world that were not occupied due to some religious or social taboo against the place), famine (the water supply could dry up or the fields were too leeched to support a population- the people had to move on), natural disaster, etc…
There’s a lot of mystery to habitation patterns. Here in Alabama and in Georgia there are several large communities (some with populations in the thousands) that essentially stopped overnight and long before the arrival of the Europeans and their diseases. There’s no evidence of famine or drought- there’s certainly an interesting story there, but it’s been lost for almost a thousand years. In a far more ancient region of the world, it’s not surprising.
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